


The Escapist's Catharsis

by Scarfinator



Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon, Self-Worth Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 05:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17277806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarfinator/pseuds/Scarfinator
Summary: Since Heldalf's death left her once more without a purpose in life, Symonne has taken to spending her days stalking Shepherd Rose on her journeys. To pass the time, yes, but also to study Sorey's friends and see for herself just what would draw them to his foolish cause. Why are they all able to push forward with a smile, no matter what, seemingly oblivious to their inevitable failures?Symonne thinks she's being sneaky about it, but Edna's been privy to her constant presence all along. One day, months after Symonne started stalking them, Edna finally gets fed up and goes to confront their moronic biggest fan.To confront her, to tell her to go away... To give her a piece of her mind, and to give her a reality check on just how screwed up her life views are.





	The Escapist's Catharsis

There was still so much Symonne failed to understand about those people.

For the past several months, she had spent her day tailing Shepherd Rose and her seraphim. To Symonne, the group represented the feeble fight against the eternally looming threat of malevolence. Although it was pathetic in her mind, that same fight had been what brought her Lord Heldalf to his knees against all odds. So she could no longer laugh. Instead, all she could do was loom in their shadow to see where their fight would truly take them.

Beyond morbid curiosity, she had many questions regarding just how ‘feeble’ that fight for prosperity truly was. Those misfits had deigned to tell her, with sincere conviction, that she had a right to live despite her cursed illusory powers. Should she desire an answer to just what they meant—to test whether they were truly naïve fools, or if there was actual merit to their words—she had to reassess them and herself somehow.

Symonne had seen plenty of strange occurrences during her time following the new Shepherd. Perhaps the most impactful event of all had been months ago when she attempted to harass that princess with illusions of her old, traitorous mentor. But somehow, being subject to the illusion had resulted in catharsis for the girl—A chance for her to settle unfinished business, even if only symbolically.

Causing harm when trying to do good was a concept Symonne was well familiar with; the countless times she had caused destruction while trying to help someone played throughout her mind. But doing good when trying to cause harm? That was quite a novel concept to her.

“I see we still have our stalker. For shame; I thought we might had finally gotten rid of you.”

Symonne jumped just a touch in place, then slowly turned to meet the owner of that voice. Her eyes immediately met those of Edna—the seraph who appeared to be the most grounded to reality of all, and yet still went along with the Shepherd’s naïvety. She was by far the most confusing of the lot, yet she smiled in amusement, meaning that Symonne had failed to hide her surprise. Symonne grimaced.

“Are you truly surprised?” Symonne asked. “It is I who should be disappointed; I wouldn’t think you careless enough to lose notice of me.”

Edna shrugged. “I said I thought we MIGHT have gotten rid of you. I’ve never once let my guard down, but you’re also far from the only annoyance who’s been following us around. This is the first time in weeks I’ve caught you in the flesh, after all, and I’ll give you one thing: sometimes these days it’s impossible to tell your illusions apart from the garden variety hellion.”

“You caught me today, did you not? Well, it doesn’t matter in the end. I have no intentions of leaving you all behind just yet; not when your presence is the only entertainment remaining in my life.”

Edna began to slightly twirl her parasol. “You really are a creep. All we’ve been doing for the past forever is going around purifying hellions, and you think that’s entertainment?”

Symonne laughed. “Naught but purifying hellions, yes. But purifying hellions in the face of inevitable loss… The tedium you experience for lofty ideals with no guarantee of payoff is what truly interests me.“

Edna stared Symmone down, her increasing irritation clear. “Grow up,” she said.

Symonne balked. “Grow… up? I assure you, I have walked this world for centuries. Just as many as you have, if not more. What makes you conclude that I must ‘grow up’?”

“Life experience means nothing if you learn nothing from it. You can butter your vocabulary up with as many fancy words as you want, but you’re really no more than a child,” Edna scoffed. “If I hadn’t already met you a few centuries before my journey with Sorey, I wouldn’t have guessed you to be any older than a few decades.”

“You’ve… met me before?”

Edna shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know why I expected you to remember honestly, since I had never even seen your face at that time. But yes.” She scowled and looked aside from Symonne’s gaze. “It was a short while before I realized my brother had become a dragon.

“ _He_ had come back for a visit out of nowhere, after centuries of absence. It took me far longer than I would have liked to figure out that he was an illusion; but then at one point he left me claiming he would be back in a few moments, only to completely disappear. When I went looking for him and caught wind from another seraph there was an illusionist about, I realized I had been played for a fool.

“So, I asked around about you. Turns out you had gotten yourself a reputation for ‘helping’ other people with your powers. Humans and seraphim alike had been subject to mirages that all seemed helpful in theory, but only caused problems with their fake happiness. My firsthand experience with your illusions led me to outright go searching for you for a time.” She suddenly turned and glared at Symmone. “I had some… words for you.”

Symonne stared Edna down in turn. “I presume you did not intend to thank me?”

“Of course not, “ Edna crossed her arms. “At the time I was more than happy to see Eizen again. But realizing that he had not come back after all did nothing but anger me. The fact that someone sincerely thought presenting me with a mirage that ultimately did nothing to replace him would make me happy? Such platitudes irritated me.

“My plans to find you came to a halt when Eizen came back to Spiritcrest—this time as a dragon. But my resentment only got worse. Now that I knew there truly was nothing I could have done for my brother, your feeble attempts to sate me only stung worse in retrospect.”

Symonne laughed. “Such honest words from someone with your relentless level of emotional guard.”

“I’m just telling you that what you’re doing is messed up,” Edna chided. “Even removing myself from the situation, it’s something that needed to be said.”

“Have you forgotten though?” Symonne glowered. “I had figured out long before this day that I was a fool. It truly was remiss of me to think any sort of false happiness could possibly replace a true happiness. And my epiphany is precisely what placed me by Lord Heldalf’s side; to finally embrace the truth of this world once and for all.”

“That truth being ‘everything will one day go to hell and there’s nothing you can do about it’, right?”

Symonne shook her head. “…Quite the ineloquent way to put it, but yes. That is the truth I had came to in the end. Which is why your efforts to continue to defy your fate baffle me to this day.”

“Maybe if you didn’t center your entire life around thinking you know what’s best for other people, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” Edna retorted. “You’re killing yourself from the inside by keeping yourself so deep in your own personal little world of ‘absolute truth’.”

“‘Center my entire life around it’, you say? How amusing! So you truly believe me to be that out of touch with reality.”

That earned a major eye rolling from Edna. “Yup. And the fact that you still don’t get it is exactly why you’re so childish,” she explained. “As enlightened as you claim to be, you’re not capable of truly facing reality in any way whatsoever. You’re always running away from it at your own ego’s convenience; Fitting for an illusionist, not useful at all for a living being. Even when you claimed to be accepting the inevitable by ceasing to fight against malevolence, you were still running away from your problems.”

A dark anger came over Symonne’s face. She took a deep breath before responding to Edna, but it did little to quell her heart. “That observation of yours is naught but a fallacious ‘absolute truth’ of your own! Lord Heldalf was the only one who truly appreciated me for who I am, so I will only accept such assessments from him.”

“Believing only the person who agrees with you, huh? The same man who died because of those same ideals? I’d say that counts more as running away from reality than you realize,” Edna said. “Either way, I don’t need to think you’re ‘useful’ to be right. In the first place, why are you so hung up over being able to help others? I’m disappointed but not surprised to see that Lailah’s little speech at the end of our fight against Heldalf did nothing to help you.”

“...Interesting of you to be so invested in my fate,” Symonne observed. “You struck me as the type to consider the personal matters of others mere trifles.”

Edna took a moment to breathe before responding to her. “They may be trifles, but if I let you be, you’ll just get in our way later. I’m left with no choice but to help you.”

“... Very well.” Symonne knew she wouldn’t get an honest answer. “But you are by far the last person who has a right to lecture me. Did you not spend centuries upon that mountain with the belief your brother would never be revived?” Symonne inquired. “Did you not tell the former Shepherd your brother was beyond saving? ”

“Huh. I don’t remember you being around to hear any of that. You sure are good at this creepy stalker thing.”

“Answer to me. I refuse to take words of wisdom from a hypocrite.”

Edna sighed. “At least I had the capacity to get past that. At least I realized there was a sliver of hope for Eizen’s revival and decided to follow it instead of sulking on his mountain, self-absorbed in my own fear of failure. Meanwhile, here you are. Still expecting me to hand feed you answers on what you should be doing with your own life. I’m done with you.”

She walked away, leaving Symonne behind her. She had only managed a few steps before Rose materialized before her.

“Symonne, huh? Haven’t seen you in a while,” Rose said flatly in the girl’s direction.

Symonne crossed her arms and frowned. “What an incredibly casual way to regard me. Do you recall who I am, New Shepherd?”

“Of course I do! That’s exactly why I can talk to you like this.“ 

Symonne stared at her and mused silently to herself. _‘Ever the strange girl…’_

“Edna’s said a few times that you’ve been following us around. Is this still about that ‘finding your worth in this world’ thing?“

Symonne cocked her head. “My… worth?”

“Ugh, guess I should have known better than to think you’d get it by now…” Rose closed her eyes and entered a state of deep thought for a short time, and then completely changed her demeanor to a bright one of excitement.

“I have an idea! Say, want to come join us at camp? I’ve got a great new curry bun recipe that I think is gonna be a great hit! I’m always up for more taste testers.”

 _‘Does that girl know what she’s asking of me?!’_ Symonne was so baffled that she couldn’t even bring herself to reply aloud.

After several moments of silence, Edna groaned. “Well, that answers that,” She turned to walk away from Symonne. “If you ever feel like taking her up on that offer—"

Edna looked down at her arm to find a pale hand grabbing it.

Symonne hadn’t even thought about what she was doing when she leaped forward. All she knew was that she wasn’t done with Edna yet. And then she grabbed on.

It would have been remiss to back out at this point.

“…Very well,” Symonne declared. “I’ll humor you for a touch.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Zinestiria release!!!
> 
> I've had this sitting around since June of last year, so I'm super excited to share it with the world! I was really proud of how this turned out, and I still am, so getting to post this today makes me so happy. This is the first time I've ever gotten to participate in an application based zine, too, so extra fun milestones have been made!
> 
> Symonne's such a fascinating character; it was around the time I played Alisha's DLC and saw her struggling with what to do after Heldalf's death that I was first drawn to her big time. It was only briefly visited, true, but the thought of her being allowed to live her life for herself even after her "purpose" was gone was something I super appreciated. Usually you'd expect these sort of characters to get killed off, as if they were right about having "no purpose"... and I never like those kinds of implications, so yeah Symonne's great.
> 
> I also wanted to run with the idea that Edna might have known Symonne before Zestiria! The way she talked sometimes, I got the impression she might have been familiar with at least Symonne's existence. Perhaps to a personal level like I depicted here? Either way, I've decided I like these two together a lot, and I love Edna and Symonne both dearly as individual characters too. So I figured: "Why not? I'm gonna write about them"
> 
> Thank you so so much to everyone who brought Eternal Dream: A Tales of Zestiria Fanzine (aka Zinestiria)!! While we're talking about Symonne, major kudos to Canis for putting that charm of her in the complimentary merch roster too!


End file.
